The Cinematheque

“While he tackles touchy subjects such as divorce and bullying, The Case of Hana & Alice remains first and foremost a charming comedy that uses the vivid imagination of its characters as means to create hilarious situations … Iwai confirms his rightful place amongst the most eclectic directors of his time.”

Nicolas Archambault, Fantasia Festival 2015

Iwai Shunji’s decade-long break from feature filmmaking in Japan ended with this bookend to Hana & Alice, his bittersweet and fantastical chronicle of friendship. The film, a work of rotoscope animation, is set as a prequel, but Iwai doesn’t simply mimic Hana & Alice​’s breakneck elaborations or set up events we know will later take place. Instead he introduces a strong, almost paranoid tone of small-town superstition, which sets the two leads off on a (relatively harmless) detective hunt. Rotoscoping allows the decade-older cast (including leads Aoi Yu and Anne Suzuki) to reprise their roles, ballet performances included. While the film mostly shadows its young duo, capturing the moment they met, Iwai reserves some pathos for a supporting character in one of the most evocative reflections on mortality of his career, which can be seen as a meditation on time following the death of his collaborator Shinoda Noboru, as well as an homage to Kurosawa Akira’s Ikiru.

In Japanese with English subtitles

“This lilting, piquant prequel [contains] many lyrical sequences … [Rotoscoping] only enhances Iwai’s closely observed psychological portraits.”

Andrea Gronvall, Chicago Reader